By the way, what are all of these “things”? Mobile devices, parking meters, thermostats, cardiac monitors, tires, roads, cars, supermarket shelves, and yes, even cattle. The list is endless, and it just keeps getting longer and more interesting. Literally, by the second.

Even more exciting is when all of these things are combined with people, process and data via the network to deliver transformational value to the world by improving the way we make decisions, saving us time and money, and so much more. That’s the Internet of Everything, and its value increases every time we connect the unconnected.

So we’re paying close attention. The connections counter will help us keep track of exactly where we are in this journey, starting now and continuing through 2020.

We encourage you to keep track as well. Cisco invites journalists, analysts and other interested parties to check out the IoE Connections Counter and to feature it in your own content.

Let the countdown to 2020 and 50 billion connections begin!

Our methodology: To estimate the number of connected objects during 2013-20 we first estimated the total number of ‘things’ in the world and then determined the proportion of connected things. For 2012, we had estimated the total number of ‘things’ in the world to be 1.5 trillion and the number of connected objects to be 8.7 billion, implying 0.6% penetration rate of connected objects. We expect the number of things to reach 1.8 trillion in 2020, growing 3% annually. Subsequently, we have assumed that connectivity costs will decline by 25% annually during 2013-20. Conservatively, we assume the price-elasticity of demand to be ~1 and consequently expect annual growth in number of things to be 25% CAGR during 2013-20. Based on these assumptions, we estimate that the number of connected objects to reach ~50 billion in 2020 (or 2.7% of the total things in the world).

Traditionally, content from videoconferences was preserved only in the memories of the participants. Now, new tools to easily capture, transform, and share video extend the life of video and make it available to people anywhere, anytime, using any device.

Join us for a videocast on June 5th 10:00 am Pacific, to explore how you can extend the reach and value of your video content for organizational communications, business meetings, and live and on-demand events. Register now.

If I had to summarize Cisco Live London in one word, I choose “educational”. In the four days I was at Cisco Live London, I had the opportunity to meet our local medianet experts, Patrick Charretour and Peter Matthews, learn about our broad core network portfolio, and listen to the challenges our customers face as they use video solutions in their organization. Whether customers are deploying video surveillance, signage, or telepresence, each seemed to want help on where to start with their deployment and wondering if medianet would be the solution.

Conversations at the medianet station were engaging and all seem to start with the same question, “What is medianet?”. Medianet is Cisco’s end-to-end video architecture, optimize for the pervasive deployment of video. So at Cisco Live, we demonstrated how Cisco’s medianet architecture makes it easier for you to plan, deploy and manage video in your organization. Using Cisco TelePresence EX 90 systems, we demonstrated the performance monitoring and mediatrace capabilities in a Cisco medianet, allowing application and network managers to easily identify and troubleshoot issues that may occur during a telepresence call. We also showed a new capability, but since we haven’t officially launched it, I can’t say much. You’ll just have to go to Interop Las Vegas or Cisco Live San Diego to find out.

The answer is simple… yes. But you need to decide based on your video conferencing needs.

Maybe sharing isn’t the best name – think of it more as showing – meaning the person you are talking to can look at the exact same thing you are looking at on your computer.

It beats emailing a document because they can see you literally point to the item, or make the edit, or surf the website in real time. There are different ways you can share and it can make a difference.

When you watch, you’ll learn when to share an application or your desktop, and when it’s better to upload a presentation or document to your WebEx session. Virtual meeting expert Janine Kurnoff goes behind the scenes and shows you how to present like a pro. You’ll learn how to easily leverage the best features in both methods and keep your viewers more engaged.

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